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Obama Taps Past to Make Case for the Future

This election is about ending the Iraq War, but even more its about moving beyond it, Senator Barack Obama told an audience in Chicago.Credit
John Gress/Reuters

CHICAGO, Oct. 2 — For months, Senator Barack Obama has tried to set himself apart by reminding voters of his original opposition to the war in Iraq.

Not only has he raised it in every debate, but his campaign also reprinted a speech he delivered in 2002, warning of a “rash war,” and distributed copies to Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond. Yet Mr. Obama has struggled to persuade primary voters why it matters, particularly when he and leading rivals share similar Iraq exit strategies, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has argued that what matters is not what happened in the past, but what candidates would do in the future.

So with the fifth anniversary approaching of the Congressional vote that gave President Bush authority to wage war, Mr. Obama sought to sharpen his argument here Tuesday, trying at once not only to spell out his differences with Mrs. Clinton and John Edwards, but also arguing why it was significant for voters in trying to measure how they would deal with foreign policy crises of the future.

“There is a choice that has emerged in this campaign, one that the American people need to understand,” Mr. Obama said, delivering a foreign policy address at DePaul University. “They should ask themselves: Who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the cold war right, and who got it wrong?”

It remains an open question whether Mr. Obama’s approach — reprising the past to foreshadow the future — will gain traction in the final three months of the year as voters pay more attention to the race, and help him turn what many Democrats had once viewed as Mrs. Clinton’s biggest vulnerability against her.

Advisers concede he must strike a balance between looking back and looking ahead, yet they believe his early views on Iraq remain a core part of his appeal to voters seeking change.

Mr. Obama, not surprisingly, did not invoke the names of his leading rivals, Mrs. Clinton of New York and Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, both of whom voted for the Iraq war resolution on Oct. 11, 2002. He did not need to. In his speech on Tuesday, it was clear what Mr. Obama meant when he reminded Democrats that blame for the war should not rest solely on the Bush administration.

“Some now seek to rewrite history. They argue that they weren’t really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or they were voting for diplomacy,” Mr. Obama said. “But the Congress, the administration, the media and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002 — this was a vote about whether or not to go to war.”

Mr. Obama timed his address to coincide with the anniversary of a speech he delivered five years ago Tuesday, while serving as an Illinois state senator, when he stood before a crowd of sign-waving, antiwar advocates in downtown Chicago and declared his opposition to a “war based not on reason, but on politics.” He was in the early stages of a United States Senate bid.

Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, he said his judgment on Iraq would be indicative of his approach to foreign policy challenges going forward. But not all of his advisers agree on the degree to which his 2002 speech should play into his current campaign, with some of them raising concerns that it could overshadow a fresh, forward-looking message. (Campaigns, as Bill Clinton likes to argue, work when they are about the future, not the past.)

“I don’t think we can run a race — and no one ever suggested we would — on the basis of that vote in 2002,” David Axelrod, a chief strategist for Mr. Obama, said. “We all agree that we have to look forward.”

After nine months of campaigning, there are signs that Mr. Obama’s initial views on the war are not a leading concern to many Democrats. It is Mrs. Clinton who holds a sizable lead over Mr. Obama among primary voters who say the United States should never have taken military action against Iraq, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll early last month.

Since the campaign began, in a series of debates over the spring and summer, the differences between the candidates often have blurred. Mr. Edwards, who has repeatedly expressed his regret for his vote, is now competing with Mr. Obama for the most ardent antiwar vote. Mrs. Clinton, who has not apologized for her vote, has long stopped being heckled by Democratic audiences for her early views.

“We believe the voters are focused on the future and on ending the war in Iraq,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, responding to Mr. Obama’s speech.

In his 30-minute address, standing before a dozen American flags, Mr. Obama appeared to enjoy some success as he wove the past and the future together, saying: “This election is about ending the Iraq War, but even more it’s about moving beyond it. And we’re not going be safe in a world of unconventional threats with the same old conventional thinking that got us into Iraq.”

When he left Chicago, he flew to Iowa to deliver similar speeches in Des Moines and Coralville, where strategists believe the antiwar message from 2002 remains potent. Traveling with Mr. Obama for the first time was Theodore Sorensen, a senior adviser to President John F. Kennedy, who was on hand to drive home one central argument.

“Five years ago, Obama showed superb judgment,” Mr. Sorensen said. “Anyone who swallowed the Washington spin hook, line and sinker and voted to authorize this terrible war showed very bad judgment.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Keeps Tapping Past to Make Case for the Future. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe